aristotle's rhetoric in the later medieval universities.pdf

Aristotle's Rhetoric in the Later Medieval Universities: A ReassessmentAuthor(s): Charles F. BriggsSource: Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Summer 2007), pp.243-268Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the International Society for the Historyof RhetoricStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rh.2007.25.3.243 .Accessed: 06/06/2014 05:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of California Press and International Society for the History of Rhetoric are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 200.16.5.202 on Fri, 6 Jun 2014 05:51:06 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Charles F. Briggs

243

Rhetorica, Vol. XXV, Issue 3, pp. 243268, ISSN 0734-8584, electronic ISSN 1533-8541. 2007 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights re-served. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce articlecontent through the University of California Presss Rights and Permissions website,at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/RH.2007.25.3.243.

Aristotles Rhetoric in theLater Medieval Universities:A Reassessment

Abstract: This essay offers a reassessment of the reception history

of the Latin translation of Aristotles Rhetoric in the universities

and mendicant studia of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. While

it accepts James J. Murphys assertion, originally made in 1969,

that Aristotles Rhetoric was studied as part of moral philosophy, it

presents new manuscript and textual evidence of how this work

was actually used. It argues for its popularity and importance

among later medieval scholastics and suggests we take a more

nuanced view of what they understood rhetoric to be.

In the 1340s, the Dominican friar Luca Mannelli wrote aCompendiummoralis philosophiae anddedicated it to the no-ble soldier and poet Bruzio Visconti ofMilan. In the lovely

initial on the opening page of the presentation copy nowParis, BNFLat. 6467 Luca and Bruzio discuss what is in the book held openin Lucas hand.1 Beneath this, at the base of the illuminated border,Bruzio sits enthroned, a sword in his right hand, an open book in his

An earlier version of this article was read in Seattle at the 2004 Annual Meeting of theMedieval Academy of America. I would like to thank Rita Copeland for encouragingme to write that paper, and for reading and commenting upon an earlier draft ofthis article. I would also like to thank Elizabeth A.R. Brown and the two anonymousreaders for their helpful suggestions. Portions of the research on which this article isbased were funded by a Starr Foundation Visiting Fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall,Oxford in 2001 and aVatican Film LibraryMellon Fellowship at Saint Louis Universityin the summer of 2003.

1E. Pellegrin, La bibliothe`que des Visconti et Sforza, ducs de Milan. Supplement(Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1969), 27, pl. 92. This miniature was probably painted byAndrea da Bologna, who is responsible for illuminating three other manuscriptscommissioned by Bruzio.


RHETOR ICA244

left, his feet resting on the back of conquered Superbia. To his rightstand three of the chief paganmoral philosophers, ValeriusMaximus,Seneca, and Aristotle, and to his left, Saints Thomas Aquinas, Am-brose, and Augustine. Around the border, placed in roundels, arerepresentations of several of the cities of Lombardy, with BruziosMilan taking pride of place in the top center. Luca, who began hiscareer with the Order of Preachers back in the 1290s at the Florentineconvent of Santa Maria Novella, served later as prior of the conventof San Domenico in Pistoia (1331-32), then as preacher general in1332. He went on to spend much of the 1340s at his home convent inFlorence before occupying three bishops sees in succession, endinghis life as bishopof Fano in 1362. Fromhis career andknownwritings,which include, alongwith theCompendiummoralis philosophiae, anEx-positio of Valerius Maximus Facta et dicta memorabilia and a Tabulatioet expositio Senecae, one can say that he is a very good example of thekind of education then practiced in the ItalianDominican studia of thelater thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.2 That education can,on the one hand, be characterized as pre-humanist or early humanist,since it included the serious study of the Roman auctores, but it canalso be called scholastic, in that it studied the texts and applied thepedagogical and discursive practices of the universities.3

Luca divided his Compendium into three parts: the first devotedto a discussion of moral philosophy, the second to the four cardinalvirtues, and the third to the subject of friendship. In the prefaceLuca tells Bruzio that his chief sources are Aristotles NicomacheanEthics, CicerosDe officiis andTusculanDisputations, and thePrima andSecunda Secundi of Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica.4 Although he

2T. Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, vol. 3 of 4 (Rome: AdS. Sabinae, 1970-93), 89-90.

3OnDominican education, seeM.M.Mulchahey, First the Bow is Bent in Study....:Dominican Education before 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,1998); and the essays by Mulchahey, A. Ruther, M. F. Johnson, and C. F. Briggs inMedieval Education, ed. R. B. Begley and J.W. Koterski (NewYork: FordhamUniversityPress, 2005), 123-96. Still valuable are L .E. Boyle, Notes on the Education of theFratres communes in the Dominican Order in the Thirteenth Century, in Xenia MediiAevi Historiam Illustrantia Oblata Thomae Kaeppeli, O.P., ed. R. Creytens and P. Kunzle(Rome:Edizioni di Storia eLetteratura, 1978), 249-67;C. T.Davis, Education inDantesFlorence, in Davis, Dantes Florence and Other Essays (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1984), 137-65. On the use of the terms pre-humanism and earlyhumanism, see R. G.Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism fromLovato to Bruni (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 19-30.

4Sed aliam excusationem affero quia quicumque hoc opus culpare volueritcognoscat quod que in hoc opere expressi ab Aristotile ex libro Ethicorum a Tullio


Aristotles Rhetoric in the Later Medieval Universities 245

does not mention Aristotles Rhetoric here, its intimate connectionto moral philosophy can nonetheless be inferred from Lucas choiceof authorities and from the image of the philosophers on BNF Lat.6467s opening page. For Luca, Bruzio, and their contemporaries,not only were Cicero, Valerius Maximus, Seneca, and Aristotle thechief pagan moral philosophers, the first and last of this groupwere also considered to be experts in the art, or indeed science, ofrhetoric, while the writings of their companions Valerius Maximusand Seneca offered models of eloquence in action. In their minds,then, rhetoric was, as Cicero had said in the De inventione, a partof civil or political science, but it also was what Aristotles Rhetoricdefined as a form of reasoned discourse whose aim was persuasionregardingprobable things, andwhose special provincewasdiscoursein the realm of ethical and political affairs.5 Not per se a branchof moral philosophy, rhetoric was nevertheless moral philosophysnecessary communicative tool.

In an essay published in 1969 (and subsequently in his bookRhetoric in the Middle Ages), James J. Murphy first noted the closeconnection between rhetoric and moral philosophy in the curricu-lum of the medieval universities.6 Citing the evidence of medievaluniversity statutes and manuscript contents, Murphy not only madea strong case for rhetoric, and more specifically Aristotles Rhetoric,being studied in connection with Aristotles Ethics and Politics, butalso argued that rhetoric, instead of being an integral part of thecurriculum in the same way that grammar and dialectic were, wasconspicuously absent from university curricula until very near theendof theMiddleAges.7Hewent on to laymuchof theblame for thislacuna squarely at the feet of the Augustinian friar and Parisian artsand theology master Giles of Rome, who shortly after 1270 wrote thefirst, and most influential, commentary on William of Moerbekestranslation of Aristotles Rhetoric. According to Murphy, Giles not

ex libro De officiis et Tusculanis questionibus a Thoma ex prima et secunda secundecollegi pauca de meis cogitationibus preter formam procedendi subiungens: BNFLat. 6467, fol. 2v.

5Cicero, De inventione 1.5.6; Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.2.1356a21-35; Giles of Rome,Commentaria in Rhetoricam Aristotelis (Venice, 1515; facsimile repr. Frankfurt: Minerva,1968), fols. 7r-8r.

6J. J. Murphy, The Scholastic Condemnation of Rhetoric in the Commentary ofGiles of Rome on the Rhetoric of Aristotle, in Arts liberaux et philosophie auMoyen Age:actes du Quatrie`me Congre`s international de philosophie medievale (Paris: J. Vrin, 1969),833-41; J. J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from St.Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 89-101.

7Murphy, Scholastic Condemnation of Rhetoric, 833.


RHETOR ICA246

onlymanaged tomake rhetoric inferior to dialectic and to emphasizethe role of rhetoric in particular actions, he also relegated Aristo-tlesRhetoric to the role of adjunct to the study of ethics and politicsand helped assure that it played no part in the medieval theoriesof discourse, where Cicero is the dominant figure.8

In the years since the publication of Murphys pioneering work,several scholars have reconstituted rhetorics role both within andat the margins of the universities. They have shown that contrary toits being largely ignored, there was, in fact, considerable attentiongiven to it in the arts curriculum at Bologna and Padua, as well as atParis and Oxford.9 Even Aristotles Rhetoric appears by 1300 to havebeen quietly assimilated into the matrix of mid [thirteenth]-centuryrhetoric.10 It has also been made apparent that there were no clearboundaries within arts teaching at Paris and elsewhere, and thatmasters and students engaged in dictaminal instruction that wasnot strictly part of the curriculum.11 None, however, contends withMurphys basic assertion that what sustained interest in AristotlesRhetoric at the universities was its applicability to the study of moralphilosophy.12 Nor is there any arguing with the manuscript evidencecompiled by Murphy: copies of Moerbekes translation of AristotlesRhetoric almost always appear accompanied by one or more of theStagirites other moral philosophical texts, and they virtually nevershare a codex with other rhetorical works or with Aristotles treatiseson dialectic.

8Murphy, Scholastic Condemnation of Rhetoric, 839-40.9G. Leff, The Trivium and the Three Philosophies, inAHistory of theUniversity in

Europe,Volume1:Universities in theMiddleAges, ed. H. de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992), 307-16; M. Camargo, Tria sunt: The Long and theShort of Geoffrey of Vinsaufs Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi,Speculum 74 (1999): 935-55, and Medieval Rhetorics of Prose Composition: Five EnglishArtes Dictandi and Their Tradition (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Textsand Studies, 1995); K. M. Fredborg, The Scholastic Treaching of Rhetoric in theMiddle Ages, Cahiers de lInstitut du Moyen-Age grec et latin 55 (1987): 85-105; K. M.Fredborg, Ciceronian Rhetoric and the Schools, in Learning Institutionalized: Teachingin the Medieval University, ed. J. Van Engen (Notre Dame: University of Notre DamePress, 2000), 21-41; J. O. Ward, Rhetoric in the Faculty of Arts at the Universities ofParis and Oxford in the Middle Ages: A Summary of the Evidence, Bulletin DuCange54 (1996): 159-231.

10P.O. Lewry, Rhetoric at Paris and Oxford in the Mid-Thirteenth Century,Rhetorica 1 (1983): 45-63 (p.57).

11Ward, Rhetoric in the Faculty of Arts, 216; Camargo,Medieval Rhetorics, 20-32.12We may, nevertheless, take Murphys basic point that interest in Aristotles

rhetoric was kept alive, within the university, by its relationship to ethics and politics:Ward, Rhetoric in the Faculty of Arts, 217.



But the manuscripts tell a richer and more nuanced story thanthe one originally related by Murphy. In what follows I intend tocast the net much wider, looking not only at surviving copies of theMoerbeke translation but also at a substantial body of manuscriptscontaining ancillary and derivative material from the Rhetoric, aswell as texts that use the Rhetoric. What these manuscripts and theircontents reveal is the emergence of an intellectual environment, inboth universities and the studia of the mendicant orders, whereinrhetoricwas appreciated in part for its formal elements but evenmoreso for its fundamental role in moral psychology, practical theology,and political science. In all this Giles of Rome has his place, but it isnot quite the one Murphy assigned to him. Therefore this essay willalso revisit certain aspects of the chronology and context of rhetoricalstudies in higher education in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuriesin order to show how Giles, and Aristotles Rhetoric, helped revivethe study of rhetoric in the arts curriculum of the universities andin the theological studies of both the universities and the schools ofthe mendicants.

Giles of Rome occupies a crucial place in the history of academicuses of rhetoric in the later Middle Ages. Giless commentary on theRhetoric quickly became the standard accessus to Aristotles text, andremained so throughout the Middle Ages. It did so, according toCostantino Marmo, owing to its precociousness (he seems to havecompleted it within three years of William of Moerbekes translationof the Rhetoric), fullness (it treats the entire text), and high quality (itsucceeds in making sense of a difficult text whose three translations,including Moerbekes, are frequently difficult to comprehend).13 ButGiless unrivalled familiarity with the Rhetoric also played a fun-damental role in his conceptualization of moral philosophy, whichis given its fullest expression in the De regimine principum, a workhe completed within a decade of writing his Rhetoric commentary,and which he dedicated to the French dauphin, Philip the Fair. In Deregimine principumGiles cites theRhetoric by name some ninety times.Indeed, it is the third most cited work, surpassed only by AristotlesPolitics (with some 235 named citations) and the Ethics (with some185). The influence of the Rhetoric is particularly evident in the firstof De regimine principums three books, since the four parts of this

13C. Marmo, LUtilizzatione della traduzioni latine della Rhetorica nel com-mento di Egidio Romano (1272-1273), in La rhetorique dAristote: traditions et commen-taires de lAntiquite au XVIIe sie`cle, ed. G. Dahan and I. Rosier-Catach (Paris: J. Vrin,1998), 111-34.


RHETOR ICA248

book, devoted in turn to happiness, virtue, the passions, and char-acter, follow exactly the thematic structure of the Rhetorics first twobooks.14 Moreover, book ones entire fourth part, on the character ofmen as determined by their age and condition, is drawn from theRhetoric. The debt does not end there, since the Rhetoric is the chiefsource for chapters in the second and third parts of book two thattreat of the character of wives and daughters (bk. 2, pt. 1, chaps.12-13; bk. 2, pt. 2, chaps. 19-21), and for the chapters of book three,part twowhose subject is the proper province of royal councilors andjudges (chaps. 16-29), and theproper relationship between a ruler andhis subjects (chaps. 34-36).15 Interestingly, though hardly surprising,given the subject matter and aims of the De regimine principum, Gilesrelies almost entirely on the first and second books of the Rhetoric,which focus on human qualities and relationships, and the role ofdiscourse in those relationships, but he virtually ignores book threesmore technical advice on diction and the arrangement of speeches.16

Nonetheless, his use of the Rhetoric in De regimine principumreflects his attitude toward the place of rhetoric in the classification

14C. F. Briggs, Giles of Romes De regimine principum: Reading and Writing Politicsat Court and University, c. 1275-c.1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999),11-12; J. Coleman, Some Relations between the Study of Aristotles Rhetoric, Ethicsand Politics in Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century University Arts Coursesand the Justification of Contemporary Civic Activities (Italy and France), in PoliticalThought and the Realities of Power in the Middle Ages/Politisches Denken und Wirklichkeitder Macht imMittelalter, ed. J. Canning and O. G. Oexle (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck andRuprecht, 1998), 127-57 (pp. 151-2).

15U. Staico, Rhetorica e politica in Egidio Romano, Documenti e studi sullatradizione filosofica medievale 3 (1992): 1-75 (p. 13).

16He cites book three of the Rhetoric only once (in bk. 3, pt. 2, chap. 17) inrelation to the matter of giving good counsel. Giless use of Aristotle here results, infact, from an erroneous reading of Rhetoric 3.14.1414b35, first made by Giles in hiscommentary on the Rhetoric (fol. 110r). Aristotle here offers examples of ways to begina speech, but Giles, by misconstruing Moerbekes Latin translation, glosses the textas follows: Ostendit quomodo proemium est adaptabile negocio deliberatiuo. Namtale negocium circa consilia consistit. Ideo si a consilio incipit proemium, pertinebitad negocium deliberatiuum, vtputa, quod oportet bonos consiliatores. Nam illi suntboni, quos Aristides laudat. Dicebat debent placere, nec debent esse plani. Si enimconsiliator non consulit vera, sed placentia, malus est. Rursus si est planus id est si estmanifestus et propalat, et manifestat consilium, etiam malus est. Ideo subdit, quodilli bene consulunt quicunque boni existentes inmanifesti sunt id est non propalantconsilia, sicut Alexander qui laudabat consilia Priami. Dicebat enim de eo, Iste est quiconsulit quasi diceret nullum consilium est tantum appreciandum quam istius. Siquisenim vellet in aliquo consilio concionari, bonum proemium esset, quod consiliatorbonus non debet esse placens, necque planus, sed debet esse verus et occultus, etsuper hoc vlterius suum fundaret sermonem.



of the sciences, this being the thoroughly Aristotelian one that it isa counterpart of dialectic, whose proper province is discourse relatedto ethical and political activities, but that it is not itself a division ofmoral philosophy, whose three parts, ethics, economics, and politics,are the subjects of the three major textual divisions of De regimineprincipum. In a sense, then, the place of Aristotles Rhetoric in thecurriculum of the late medieval schools was assured, and partiallydetermined, by the popularity of Giless treatments of rhetoric inboth his commentary, which survives in twenty-eight copies of theintegral text or abstracts therefrom, and in De regimine principum,extant in nearly three-hundred Latin and eighty vernacular copies.17

In recent articles, both Janet Coleman andUbaldo Staico have arguedthat Giless use of the Rhetoric is in part a result of academic rivalrybetween the artists and theologians, on the one side, and jurists, onthe other.18 Giles, by grounding rhetoric firmly in the sphere of moralphilosophy,made the case that rhetoric, seeks the roots of persuasivediscourse and the reasons for its success in the nature of humancharacter and emotion. Its method is that of a kind of demonstrationin the absence of deductive certainty. The art of rhetoric can be taught,it is a skill but one that is a productive activity of the orator ratherthan a feature of language and argument themselves. Its successfuluse can only be achieved by an orators grasp of the most importantfeatures of human nature, emotional and intellectual.19

Because artists and theologians (and, Giles hoped, the princeswho readDe regimine principum) studied moral philosophy, they hadthe capacity to know and give causes and were thus worthy torule or to counsel rulers. Conversely, jurists were the instruments ofrulers but not capable of ruling, owing to their being idiotae politici.Their ignorance of moral philosophy meant they were only capableof speaking narrative, that is descriptively, without understandingor knowing the causes of things.20 Giles, then, was trying to strip

17Staico, Rhetorica e politica, 2, 28; J. Miethke, review of Briggs, Giles of RomesDe regimine principum, Speculum 77 (2002): 481.

18Staico, Rhetorica e politica, 71-5; J. Coleman, The Science of Politics andLate Medieval Academic Debate, in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages, ed. R.Copeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 181-214 (pp. 203-9). Fora different perspective, see P. S. Lewis, Pouvoir, speculative et pratique: quellesvoix entendre?, in Penser le pouvoir au Moyen Age (VIIIe-XVe sie`cle), ed. D. Boutet andJ. Verger (Paris: Editions rue dUlm, 2000), 157-70.

19Coleman, Some Relations, 149.20Leges et iura, quae sunt de actibus hominum sub politica quae est de regimine

civitatum. . . . Sic legistae, quia ea de quibus est politica, dicunt narrative et sine ratione


RHETOR ICA250

the jurists of the privilege they claimed to counsel kings, popes, andprinces on account of their legal knowledge, and to place in theirstead artists and theologians. Nonetheless, up till the time whenGiles was writing this rivalry had had the negative effect of makingrhetoric a suspect discipline in the eyes of Paris-trained academicswho had accepted at face value the close association of rhetorical andlegal studies. Thus Giles, by subordinating both rhetoric and law tomoral philosophy, was trying thereby to revive the study of rhetoricin the university, but in such away as to undercut the influence of thejurists.21

The suspicion of rhetoric in its Ciceronian guise at Paris in themiddle years of the thirteenth century did not, however, mean itsoutright rejection: a case convincinglymade by JohnWard.22 Yet thereis no doubt that by the early years of the thirteenth century academicshad ceased to regard rhetoric as the master discipline of the liberalarts. The reasons for this are many and complicated. Certainly it wasowed in large part to the massive influx of Aristotelian and Arabictexts and the effort to assimilate and appropriate them, beginningin the later years of the twelfth century. It also was the result of thekinds of texts thatwere first being translated,which pertained largelyto fields of dialectic, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. The newmoral philosophical and rhetorical texts were relative latecomers,after all, not beginning to be translated in their entirety until the late1240s (with Grossetestes translation of the Ethics), and the Politicsand Rhetoric not really circulating in any serious way until after theirtranslation by William of Moerbeke in the 1260s.23 The developmentof more specialized rhetorical arts, like dictamen and preaching,also probably had an effect on the relative neglect of rhetoric inthe university curriculum during these years.24 What little attention

appellari possunt idiotae politici. Ex hoc autem patere potest quod magis honorandisunt scientes politicam et morales sciencias, quam scientes leges et iura. Nam quantoscientes et dantes causam, honorabiliores sunt loquentibus et non reddentibus causamdicti, tanto tales honorabiliores sunt illis: Giles of Rome,De regimine principum (Rome,1556), bk. 2, pt. 2, chap. 8 (fols. 183v-84r).

21Staico, Rhetorica e politica, 62-75.22Ward, Rhetoric in the Faculty of Arts, cited in n. 9 above, pp. 159-231.23The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny,

and J. Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 45-79.24Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, cited in n. 6 above, pp. 194-355; H.

Wieruszowski, Rhetoric and the Classics in Italian Education of the ThirteenthCentury, in Wieruszowski, Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy (Rome:Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1971), 589-627; M. Camargo, Rhetoric, in The SevenLiberal Arts in the Middle Ages, ed. D. L. Wagner (Bloomington: Indiana University



was paid to rhetoric came largely in the formof discussingwhere it fitinto the classification of the sciences, as one finds in the introductionsto philosophy and examination manuals studied by Osmund Lewryand Claude Lafleur.25

But the relative lack of interest in rhetoric as a subject in its ownright also grew out of changing attitudes toward language, andmostparticularly towardLatin, during the early years of the thirteenth cen-tury. In the preceding centuries Latin eloquentia had been one of thechief goals of higher education in the cathedral andmonastic schools.Eloquence, based on imitation of classical and scriptural auctores, wasthe very core of ones ethical formation. This form of eloquence wasalso connected to nobility, since its attainment belonged very muchto the province of clerics of aristocratic origin.26 All this began tochange, however, with the growing democratization and institution-alization of learning associatedwith theGregorian reformmovementand the rise of universities as a response to the institutional needsof the Church and centralizing states. Not only were those seekingan education drawn increasingly from the middling ranks of society,but the object of their studies was becoming more pragmatic.27 Thispragmatism spilled over into the field of language. Thus, the newpastoral expectations of the clergy demanded the abandonment ofhigh-brow eloquentia in favor of middle-brow sermons built on aneasily comprehended and memorable rational structure, and spokenin clear, simple, and repetitive language.28

Press, 1983), 96-124 (pp. 107-10); R. H. Rouse and M. A. Rouse, Preachers, Florilegiaand Sermons: Studies in the Manipulus Florum of Thomas of Ireland (Toronto: PontificalInstitute of Mediaeval Studies, 1979), 3-90.

25P.O. Lewry, Rhetoric at Paris and Oxford, cited in n. 10 above, pp. 45-63;C. Lafleur, Quatre introductions a` la philosophie au XIIIe sie`cle: textes critiques et etudehistorique (Montreal and Paris: Institut dEtudes Medievales, J. Vrin, 1988).

26This and much of what is discussed in this paragraph is found in C. F. Briggs,Translation as Pedagogy: Academic Discourse and Changing Attitudes towardLatin in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, in Frontiers in the Middle Ages,ed. O. Merisalo (Louvain-la-Neuve: Federation Internationale des Instituts dEtudesMedievales, 2006), 495-505; C. S. Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and SocialIdeals in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).

27A.Murray,Reason and Society in theMiddleAges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978);M. A. Rouse and R. H. Rouse, Statim invenire: Schools, Preachers, and New Attitudesto the Page, in Rouse and Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts andManuscripts (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 191-219.

28S. Tugwell, De huiusmodi sermonibus texitur omnis recta predicatio: ChangingAttitudes toward the Word of God, in De lhomelie au sermon: histoire de la predicationmedievale, ed. J. Hamesse and X. Hermand (Louvain-la-Neuve: Universite Catholiquede Louvain, 1993), 159-68.


RHETOR ICA252

Meanwhile in the universities themselves, and in the mendicantstudia that arose beside and somewhat in competition with them, theconfrontation with the flood of new Greco-Arabic learning, trans-lated in language full of neologisms and shorn of eloquence in favorof accuracy, brought forth a new curricular taxonomy of distinctdisciplines, each with its own specialized texts and terminology. Phi-losophy, which had previously been plucked from the lush fields ofthe Latin auctores, was now discussed in the spare, dry language ofthe university lectio and disputatio. The subject matter of these lec-tures and disputations was difficult enough, and in the interests oftransmitting information to overworked and often under preparedstudents, it was necessary that lexis and syntax be kept as efficientand unambiguous as possible.29 Moreover, the prevalence of dialec-tic in the arts curriculum did no favors for eloquence, for, in thetrenchant words of Beryl Smalley, dialectic was good for scholas-tic philosophy and theology and very bad for Latin. The reign ofdialectic also brought in its wake the new modist and nominalisttheories of grammar, which, despite their key differences with oneanother, agreed that all actual languages, whether Latin or otherwise,participated in common metalinguistic structures and rules.30

This does not mean that the study of rhetoric died out at theuniversities; and its survival there has been traced by Gordon Leff,Martin Camargo, Karin Fredborg, and John Ward.31 I do, however,suggest that the curricular concerns and discursive practices of the

29O. Weijers, Le maniement du savoir: pratiques intellectuelles a` lepoque des premie`resuniversites (XIIIe-XIVe sie`cles) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 131-41; M. B. Parkes, TheInfluence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of theBook, in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt,ed. J. J. G. Alexander and M. T. Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 115-41; J.Goering, William de Montibus (c. 1140-1213): The Schools and the Literature of PastoralCare (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1992). See also several ofthe essays in J. Hamesse, ed., Aux origines du lexique philosophique europeen: linfluencede la latinitas (Louvain-la-Neuve: Federation Internationale des Instituts dEtudesMedievales, 1997).

30B. Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1960), 45; Weijers, Maniement du savoir, 131-5; Coleman, Science ofPolitics, cited in n. 18 above, pp. 190-1; L. G. Kelley, The Mirror of Grammar: Theology,Philosophy and the Modistae (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2002);S. Lusignan, Parler vulgairement: les intellectuels et la langue franaise aux XIIIe et XIVesie`cles, 2nd ed. (Paris and Montreal: J. Vrin, Presses de lUniversite de Montreal, 1987),pp. 62-7. The early phase in the development of universal grammar is surveyed by K.M. Fredborg, Universal Grammar According to Some 12th-Century Grammarians,Historiographia Linguistica 7 (1980): 69-84.

31See n. 9 above.



nascent universities did detach Latinity from eloquence in its classi-cal guise, or at least severely weakened their ties to one another.Even in Italy, as Robert Black has shown, the thirteenth centurywitnessed nothing less than a collapse of the study of the an-cient Roman classics.32 Thus, when Aristotles Rhetoric entered thescene in the 1260s, its advent brought with it not only a renewedinterest in rhetoric, but also a reassessment of its place and func-tion. In his De ortu scientiarum the English Dominican Robert Kil-wardby declared Rhetorica est sermocinalis scientia ratiocinativacirca quaestionem civilem terminandam.33 Meanwhile his Francis-can compatriot, Roger Bacon, in part seven of his Opus maius, a sec-tion devoted to moralis philosophia, quotes Aristotles Ethics to theeffect that moral philosophy is not served by demonstration (thatis dialectic), but by rhetorical argument, because rhetoric and itscounterpart poetry appeal not to the speculative intellect, which isconvinced by dialectical arguments, but rather to the practical in-tellect, which is open to persuasion, owing to its connection withthe passions.34 Bacon, whose treatment of Aristotle is influencedby both Al-Farabi and Augustine, places rhetoric squarely in theprovince of moral philosophy, and does so with the eminently prac-tical aims of persuading the Christian faithful to follow true doctrineand practice, and convincing the infidels to abandon their errors.35

Bacon, writing a few years before Giles embarked on his Rhetoriccommentary, had already, as Ire`ne Rosier-Catach has shown, an-nonc[e] bien le chemin que prendra la Rhetorique dAristote chez lesLatins, en circulant presquexclusivement avec des textes dethiqueet de politique.36

This almost exclusive circulation was first established by J. J.Murphy.37 At this juncture, it would do well for us to review, andindeed to update and augment the evidence presented by Murphyregarding themanuscripts. One hundred and one copies of theMoer-

32R. Black, Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Traditionand Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001), 192.

33G. Dahan, Lentree de la Rhetorique dAristote dans le monde latin entre 1240et 1270, in La rhetorique dAristote, cited in n. 13 above, pp. 65-86 (p. 79).

34Here Bacon refers to Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.1.1094b19-25, as notedby I. Rosier-Catach, Roger Bacon, Al-Farabi et Augustin: rhetorique, logique etphilosophie morale, in La rhetorique dAristote, cited in n. 13 above, pp. 87-110 (p.93).

35Rosier-Catach, Roger Bacon, 92-5.36Rosier-Catach, Roger Bacon, 110.37See n. 6 above.


RHETOR ICA254

beke translation of theRhetoric survive (fivemore thanMurphy knewabout).38 Of these, nearly half, forty-five manuscripts, date from thelatter part of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fourteenth century.Many of these bear the marks of northern French, and probably inmost of these cases Parisian, origins, being either in a north Frenchtextualis, or some combination of French, German, Dutch, English,Spanish, and Italian hands. Of the remainder, thirty-seven were pro-duced in the fourteenth century, while a further seven come eitherfrom the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century.Another twelve can be firmly assigned to the fifteenth century. Theplaces of origin of these later manuscripts are, not surprisingly, morevaried, reflecting the transmission of the text as well as the estab-lishment of new centers of book production in association with theproliferation of universities in the later Middle Ages.39

The explosive production of copies within a half century of theworks translation points to its avid reception; and although thatreception was somewhat limited compared to that of the Ethics,which survives in over three hundred copies of the Grossetesteand Moerbeke translations, and in a few dozen of the early EthicaNova/Ethica Vetus versions, it nonetheless compares favorably withthe 110 or so copies of the Politics.40 As Murphy earlier showed, thevast majority of theseRhetoric copies seventy-eight according tomyupdated list are accompanied by other moral philosophical textsin the manuscripts: seventy with the Politics and fifty-seven withthe Ethics, although in fully fifty-three of the manuscripts it appearswith both the Ethics and Politics. Frequently it also appears withthe pseudo-AristotelianMagna moralia and Economics: in thirty-sevenand twenty-sevenmanuscripts respectively. In the remaining twenty-threemanuscripts, theRhetoric appears alone in five andwithGiles of

38Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, cited in n. 6 above, p. 100. This numberhas since been revised upward by B. Schneider, ed., Aristoteles Latinus, Vol. XXXI, pts.1-2, Rhetorica, Translatio Anonyma sive Vetus et Translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka (Leiden,Brill, 1978), xxxiii-xxxvii. To Schneiders list can be added two further manuscripts:Oxford, Bodl. Libr. canon class. lat., fols. 153-205; Turin, Bibl. Naz. E.III.20, fols. 1-47v.

39G. Pollard, The Pecia System in theMedieval Universities, inMedieval Scribes,Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and A. G.Watson (London: Scolar Press, 1978), 145-61; C. Bozzolo and E. Ornato, Pour unehistoire du livre manuscrit au Moyen Age: trois essais de codicologie quantitative (Paris:Editions du CNRS, 1983), 15-121; L. J. Bataillon, B. G. Guyot, and R. H. Rouse, eds., Laproduction du livre universitaire auMoyenAge: exemplar et pecia (Paris: Editions du CNRS,1988); A. Gieysztor, Management and Resources, in A History of the University inEurope, cited in n. 9 above, pp. 108-43 (pp. 128-9).

40Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, cited in n. 23 above, p. 78.



Romes commentary in three. Of the fifteenmanuscripts in which theRhetoric does not share space with other moral philosophical texts, ittends in the earliest of them to be boundwith other Aristotelian texts,like theMetaphysics (which is alsooften found in themanuscriptswithmoral philosophical material), or theDe causis, Problemata, Physics, orDe animalibus. Fragments from amanuscript dating to the fourteenthcentury, now at Monte Cassino, come from the Rhetoric and thepseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum, an Arabic Mirror of Princesthat occasionally appears in collections ofmoral philosophical texts.41

It is virtually never accompanied by other non-Aristotelian rhetoricaltexts, the only exception being BibliotecaApostolica Vaticana Vat. lat.2995, an early fourteenth-century manuscript of Italian origin thatincludes an anonymous abridgment of the Ad Herennium as well asthe texts of the Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Economics, an alphabeticalindex of the Ethics, and the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum. Also noteworthyin this context is a thirteenth-century manuscript in Toledo (Bibl.del Cabildo 47.15) which combines the translatio vetus of the Rhetoricand Averroes Rhetoric commentary with Ciceros De inventione, AdHerennium, and De officiis, Martin of Bragas De quattuor virtutibus(Formula vitae honestae), and the Secretum secretorum.42

Largely ignored by Murphy, however, and only partially treatedby other scholars, is a large body of manuscripts containing ancillaryand derivative material from the Rhetoric.43 I have been able to findseventy-six of these, although there could well be a few that haveescapedmy notice (see Table). I should add the further caveat that al-though I have either personally examined or at least seen the detailedcatalogue descriptions of most of these manuscripts, there are a fewwhose entire contents I have not yet been able to assess. Here, how-ever, is what I can say so far. In these seventy-six manuscripts thereappears a wide array of ancillary/derivative texts. These include:Giles of Romes Commentary (twenty-eight copies) and De differen-

41For this, see Aristoteles Latinus, Pars Posterior, ed. G. Lacombe et al. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1955), 907-8 (no. 1312).

42The translatio vetus, an anonymous translation of the mid thirteenth century,survives in two manuscripts besides Toledo: Chicago, Newberry Libr. f. 23; and BNFLat. 16673. A list of propositions from the translatio vetus also survives in Venice, Bibl.Marciana lat. VI.164.

43Staico, Rhetorica e politica, cited in no. 15 above, pp. 4-12; Fredborg,Scholastic Teaching of Rhetoric, cited in n. 9 above, p. 97; J. R. ODonnell, TheCommentary of Giles of Rome on the Rhetoric of Aristotle, in Essays in MedievalHistory Presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. T. A. Sandquist and M. R. Powicke (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1969), 139-56; G. Bruni, The De differentia rhetoricae,ethicae et politicae of Aegidius Romanus, New Scholasticism 6 (1932): 1-18.


RHETOR ICA256

tia rhetoricae, ethicae et politicae (four copies plus a brief synopsis);44

the Tabula moralium, an exhaustive alphabetical index of the Rhetoric,Ethics, Politics, Economics, Poetics, and Magna Moralia, and of theirchief medieval commentators, compiled in 1346 by the Paris-trainedBenedictine Jean Bernier de Fayt (fifteen copies);45 the ParisianQuaes-tiones on the Rhetoric of Jean de Jandun and Jean Buridan (sevenand three copies respectively);46 thePadua-trainedBenedictineEngel-bert of Admonts late thirteenth-century Compendium of the Rhetoric,Ethics, Politics, Economics, De bona fortuna, and Ciceros De officiis (3surviving and one known lost copy);47 the Dominican Guido Ver-nani of Riminis Compendium Rethoricae (3 copies);48 two copies of thealphabetical tabula of Auctoritates from the Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric,Economics,Topics, andBoethiussDe consolatione philosophiae compiledby Petrus Storch de Czwikau at Leipzig in 1419-20;49 and one copyapiece of Hermannus Alemannus Didascalia in Rethoricam Aristotelisex glossa Alfarabii and of the Leipzig-trained early fifteenth-centuryDominican, Johannes Brasiator de Frankensteins Notabilia AegidiiRomani super libros Rethoricorum et auctoritates librorum Rethoricorum,Ethicorum, Politicorum et Yconomicorum.50 To these can be added an as-sortment of anonymousworks, either quaestiones, commenta, notabilia,propositiones, or auctoritates, of the Rhetoric, or of some combination ofthe Rhetoric, Ethics, and Politics, or Giless Rhetoric Commentary.51

44C. H. Lohr, Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries, Traditio 23 (1967): 334-5;Staico, Rhetorica e politica, 2. All subsequent citations of Lohr are to MedievalLatin Aristotle Commentaries in Traditio. Only volume number, year, and pages willbe given.

45Lohr 26 (1970): 157. Note that Tortosa, Bibl. del Cabildo 215, credited by Lohrto Bernier de Fayt, is in fact an anonymous tabula, inc. Accumulare.

46Lohr 26 (1970): 214-15; E. Beltran, Les questions sur la Rhetorique dAristotede Jean de Jandun, in La rhetorique dAristote, cited in n. 13 above, pp. 153-67 (pp.153-4). Lohr 26 (1970): 181; J. Biard, Science et rhetorique dans les Questions sur laRhetorique de Jean Buridan, in La rhetorique dAristote, 135-52, (pp.135-6).

47G.B. Fowler, Admont 608 and Engelbert of Admont (ca. 1250-1331), Archivesdhistoire doctrinale et litteraire du Moyen Age 44 (1977): 149-242 (pp.152-61).

48Lohr 24 (1968): 191-2; M. Grabmann, Methoden und Hilfsmittel des Aristote-lesstudiums im Mittelalter (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissen-schaften, 1939), 85. Guido Vernani likely prepared his compendium in associationwith his teaching duties as Dominican lector in Bologna, where he served twice dur-ing the years 1310-24. He also wrote compendia of the commentaries on the Ethicsand Politics of Thomas Aquinas and Peter of Auvergne.

49Lohr 28 (1972): 371-2; Grabmann, Methoden und Hilfsmittel, 149-51.50Lohr 24 (1968): 234 (Hermannus). Lohr 26 (1970): 160 (Johannes Brasiator).51See in the Table: Berlin, Staatsbibl. lat. quart. 377; Bruges, Stadsbibl. 482;

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 462/735 and Peterhouse College 208; Cluj,



As for the contents of these seventy-six manuscripts, fifty-three,or just over two-thirds contain some combination of theRhetoricwithother Aristotelian moral philosophical texts. By way of comparison,of the remainder, the lions share are manuscripts of Giles of RomesCommentary (fourteen manuscripts), with a further scattering ofmanuscripts containing the Compendium of Guido Vernani and theQuaestiones of Jandun and Buridan. These texts andmanuscripts alsoreveal an ongoing interest in Ciceronian and Senecan rhetoric andmoral philosophy. Jean de Jandun, in his Quaestiones refers to the Deinventione and De officiis, the Ad Herennium, the letters of Seneca, andthe pseudo-Senecan De quattuor virtutibus; he also appends someextracts from book four of Ad Herennium to the longer version ofthe Quaestiones. Also, Engelbert of Admont included a section ofextracts from theDe officiis in his compendium.Extracts fromSenecasletters to Lucilius appear along with those from the Rhetoric, Ethics,Politics, and Poetics in BL Royal 5.C.iii a manuscript, by the way,which also includes an abridgment of Giles of Romes De regimine while Vienna Nationalbibl. clw 2307 includes extracts from Ciceroalong with Jean Bernier de Fayts Tabula moralium and another ofhis alphabetical tabula, this one of Vegetius De re militari.52 Notabiliafrom the moral letters of Seneca and the pseudo-Senecan De quattuorvirtutibus alsodirectly follow those fromAristotelian rhetoricalworksin the extremely popular florilegium compiled at the very end of thethirteenth centuryby theFranciscan lector atMontpellier JohannesdeFonte, the Auctoritates Aristotelis (which also ties Aristotles Rhetoricto philosophia moralis).53

Bibl. Acad. Rom. cod. 9; Hereford, Cath. Libr. P.III.6; London, Grays Inn Libr. 2, andBL Add. 21147 and Royal 5.C.iii; Modena, Bibl. Estense Fondo Estense 14, anothercopy of which is in Paris, Bibl. Sainte-Genevie`ve 3078; Oxford, Bodl. Libr. Digby 55;Reims, Bibl. mun. 493; and Tortosa, Bibl. del Cabildo MSS 215 and 249.

52Giles of Rome relied heavily on Vegetius in bk. 3, pt. 3 ofDe regimine principum.This association of Vegetius military manual with Giless mirror of princes wasappreciated by English readers, who frequently paired the two works in manuscripts:Briggs, Giles of Romes De regimine principum, cited in n. 14 above, pp. 11, 65.

53There are some 300 surviving copies of the Auctoritates Aristotelis: J. Hamesse,Les Auctoritates Aristotelis: un florile`ge medievale (Louvain and Paris: Publications Uni-versitaires de Louvain, Editions Beatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1974); J. Hamesse, Les flo-rile`ges philosophiques, instruments de travail des intellectuels a` la fin du Moyen Ageet a` la Renaissance, in Filosofia e teologia nel trecento: studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi,ed. L. Bianchi (Louvain-la-Neuve: Federation Internationale des Instituts dEtudesMedievales, 1994), 479-508 (p. 491). Hamesse identified Johannes de Fonte as com-piler of this florilegium in 1994: J. Hamesse, Les manuscrits des Parvi flores: unenouvelle liste de temoins, Scriptorium 48 (1994): 299-332 (p. 300).


RHETOR ICA258

The dating of these manuscripts follows a predictable pattern: amere handful are from the thirteenth century, some forty from thefourteenth, and roughly a score from the fifteenth. In other words,their peak time of production follows that of the manuscripts ofthe Rhetoric itself by roughly a generation. Finally, there is someevidence of several lost Rhetoric commentaries, among them thoseof Boethius of Dacia (d. ca. 1284), Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro,OESA (d. 1342), Hermann von Schildesche, OESA (d. 1357), JohannesAlphonsus de Benavente (d. after 1478, but teaching rhetoric andarts at Salamanca 1403-18), Johannes Breslauer von Braunsberg, OP(fl. mid-late 1400s), and Lancillottus de Zerlis (fl. 1400s).54 Thesemany ancillary/derivativeworks attest to an immediate and ongoinginterest in the Rhetoric, and to a tradition, established in the firstgeneration of its reception, of connecting it to moral philosophy.

In conclusion, some general observations can be hazarded on thefortunes of Aristotles Rhetoric in the later Middle Ages. First, theearly connection of rhetoric with dialectic, on the one hand, and withmoral philosophy, on the other, popularized the study of the Rhetoricas a component of the Corpus Aristotelicum while also limiting thetime and energy devoted to it. After all, the number of quaestiones,commentaries, and compendia on the Rhetoric is dwarfed by thatof those composed on Aristotles logical works or on his Ethics andPolitics. Yet the Rhetoric was regularly taught and studied, if onlycursorily and in association with dialectic and moral philosophy. In-fluence of this kind of instruction can be seen in Dino del Garbosearly fourteenth-century commentary on Guido Cavalcantis poemDonna mi prega, wherein this former student of Bolognas famedprofessor ofmedicine, TaddeoAlderotti whose own keen interest inmoral philosophy is evinced in his havingmade an Italian translationof the Ethics and devotee of the dolce stil nuovo, cited the Rhetoric,Ethics, and Politics.55 Familiarity with Aristotles moral philosophi-cal corpus and a background in medicine are also evident in a briefanonymous commentary (Paris, BNF Lat. 16133, fols. 74r-83v), pre-pared probably between 1317 and 1319 for Jaime, heir to the throneof Aragon. Called the Libellus de ingenio bone nativitatis, it is really aseries of fourteen leges taken fromAristotles discussion of the properage of marriage and the nurturing of infants in chapters 16 and 17

54Lohr 23 (1967): 388; Lohr 23 (1967): 397; Lohr 24 (1968): 236; Lohr 30 (1974):141; Lohr 26 (1970): 160; Lohr 27 (1971): 313.

55N.G. Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils: Two Generations of Italian MedicalLearning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 72-95.



of book 7 of the Politics, and supplied with commentary, which citesby name from all Aristotles libri morales, including the Rhetoric, aswell as several of his works on natural philosophy.56

There is no doubt, however, that a reliance on moral philoso-phy is most apparent in the writings of theologians; and no wonder,since their familiarity with it helped them be more effective pastors,preachers, and confessors. This explains, perhaps, the popularityof Giles of Romes De regimine principum with its very large cleri-cal audience.57 It also helps us understand the appeal of AristotlesRhetoric amongDominicans like Guido Vernani and Johannes Brasia-tor de Frankenstein, and for Benedictines like the Austrian Engelbertof Admont and the Flemish Jean Bernier de Fayt, who explains thatjust as blessed David made himself a diadem from the crown ofthe Ammonite idol Milcom. . . . I judge it not incongruous with theconfirmation of Catholic truth to relate sometimes the writings ofthe gentile philosophers, and especially of . . . that man of excellentgenius Aristotle.58

56P. Biller, Aristotles Politica and Demographic Thought in the Kingdom ofAragon in the Early Fourteenth Century, Annals of the Archive of Ferran Valls ITaberners Library 9/10 (1991): 249-64. According to my inspection of the manuscript,it was originally in two parts the first comprising fols. 2-61 and the second, fols.62-86 and dates from the fourteenth century. The second part, which also containsan Iberian commentary on the Economics and a Tractatus magistri Pauli de causasterilitatis mulorum, was joined to part one, which includes extracts of Senecas Deremediis fortuitorum and Martin of Bragas Formula vitae honestae, by sometime in thefifteenth century. According to an inscription on fol. 1v, it was bought in Paris in 1477by a Rosselli: Medicus.

57Briggs, Giles of Romes De regimine principum, cited in n. 14 above, pp. 91-107.58Quoniam ut habetur primo paralipomenon 20 c de corona melchom ydoli

Amonitarum beatus David sibi dyadema composuit et paulus apostolus dicta quo-rumdam poetarum gentilium ad suum propositum eleganter aptavit ut Thym 1. etAct. 11 capitulis apparet et ut ait glossa beati Augustini ad Thym. primo sumpta exlibro contra inimicum legis et prophetarum licet divine auctoritati quod verum inve-nis testimonium sumere nempe de herba non queritur, que terra vel cuius hortulanicura creverit dummodo vim habeat sanativam. Idcirco non incongruum arbitror adconfirmationem catholice veritatis quandoque scripturas philosophorum gentiliumallegare presertim illorum, qui super ceteros sapientia floruerunt. Inter quos exceptotamen Platone famossissimus Aristoteles vir excellentis ingenii, ut ait Augustinusde civitate dei 12 c., qui nihil dixit sine forti ratione, ut ait Averroys. 1o De gen-eratione et corruptione, obtinuit ut estimo principatum. Eapropter, ut quorumdamipsius librorum scilicet Rhetorice, Ethicorum, Politice, Poetice, magnorumque Moral-ium nobiliora dicta pro manibus facilius habeantur, ea favente deo de prefatis librisprout potui diligenter excerpsi et in unum manipulum, quem tabulam moraliumAristotelis vocari cupio, secundum ordinem alphabeti redegi: Grabmann, Methodenund Hilfsmittel, cited in n. 48 above, p. 145.


RHETOR ICA260

This reliance on moral philosophy and rhetoric in the service ofpastoral care is perhaps best exemplified by two works of the TuscanDominican, Bartolomeo da San Concordio. The first is Bartolomeospreaching aid, the Documenta antiquorum, which he composed in thefirst decade of the fourteenth century and soon thereafter translatedinto Italian with a dedication to the Florentine banker Geri Spini.59

In it, and particularly in the second part on Virtue, Bartolomeo fre-quently cites Aristotles Rhetoric, as well as the Ethics and Politics; buthe is just as likely to quote from Ciceros De officiis and De inven-tione, the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, and the lettersof Seneca. So, to cite just one example among many, in treatise two,distinction eleven, chapter one, whose subject is the praise of theknowledge and practice of eloquence, he quotes, among other au-thorities, the De officiis, Valerius Maximus, the Elder Seneca, andthe Rhetoric.60 About a decade later Bartolomeo prepared the Com-pendium moralis philosophiae, a glossed abridgment of Giles of RomesDe regimine principum, whose likely intended audience was the mas-ters and students in the Dominicans theological studia.61 Just as hehad in his earlier work, so here too does Bartolomeo frequently drawhis glosses from Aristotles Rhetoric, as well as from Seneca, Cicero,and Valerius Maximus.62 Educated in the studia of the DominicansRoman province and then, during the 1280s, at Bologna and Paris,Bartolomeo won the praise of his contemporaries for his talents as apreacher and teacher; he also played a key role in developing the Do-minicans educational program in moral philosophy.63 More recentlyhe has been numbered among the early Italian humanists, owing tohis commentaries on Virgil and Seneca, and his Italian translation ofSallust.64

59C. Segre, Bartolomeo da San Concordio, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani,ed. A.M. Ghisalberti, 62 vols. (Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1960-2004),vol. 6, 768-70.

60Bartolomeo da San Concordio, Ammaestramenti degli antiqui, ed. P. G. Colombi(Siena: Edizioni Cantagalli, 1963), 104-5. Citations are from: De officiis 2.14.48; Factaet dicta memorabilia 8.9.2; Controversiae 2.Prefatio.3; and Rhetoric 1.1.1355b1.

61The Compendiums eleven extant copies suggest it achieved a certain popu-larity: C. F. Briggs, Moral Philosophy and Dominican Education: Bartolomeo daSan Concordios Compendium moralis philosophiae, in Medieval Education, cited in n.3 above, pp. 182-96 (pp. 185-6).

62In the glosses he cites theRhetoric andValeriusMaximus four times each, Ciceronine times, and Seneca eleven times. For other authorities cited in the Compendium,see Briggs, Moral Philosophy and Dominican Education, 190.

63Briggs, Moral Philosophy and Dominican Education, 184, 191-3; Mulchahey,First the Bow is Bent in Study, cited in n. 3 above, pp. 454-8.

64Briggs, Moral Philosophy and Dominican Education, 183-5.



The application of moral philosophy and Aristotles Rhetoric tothe political life was hardly ignored, either. In their early fourteenth-century commentaries on the Rhetoric both Jean de Jandun and JeanBuridan further elucidated rhetorics importance by stressing theabsolute necessity of rhetorical formation for those pursuing thepolitical life, and by affirming the political life as something goodand worth pursuing.65 This had been Giles of Romes message in theDe regimine principum, and it was later expounded by Marsilius ofPadua in his Defensor pacis, a work with a very different politicalprogram from Giless, but one that also makes frequent use of theRhetoric, Ethics, and Politics.66

These Paris-trained artists and theologians believed in the prac-tical, political value of what they had learned and taught in theschools, and they were willing to put it into practice in the ser-vice of the state.67 They were by no means the first periti to offerup their specialized knowledge in the interest of politics. One needonly think of the civil lawyers whom Giles of Rome sought to unseator the thirteenth-century dictator Brunetto Latini, who had stolenthe march on the scholastics when he dedicated books two andthree of his Tresor, composed in the 1260s, to ethics, rhetoric, and

65Beltran, Les questions sur la Rhetorique, cited in n. 46 above, pp. 53-67; Biard,Science et rhetorique, cited in n. 46 above, pp. 135-52; J. Zupko, John Buridan:Portrait of a Fourteenth-Century Arts Master (Notre Dame: University of Notre DamePress, 2003), 248-9.

66Marsilius cites the Politics ninety-eight times, the Ethics twenty-two times, andthe Rhetoric ten times. All but eleven of these citations occur in Discourse I, whosesubject is the constitution and functions of the State: Marsilius of Padua,Defensor pacis,trans. A. Gewirth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). On Marsilius use ofAristotles moral philosophy, see also C. J. Nedermans Afterword to this translation,446.

67J. Miethke, Political Theory and the Fourteenth-Century University, in Learn-ing Institutionalized, cited in n. 9 above, pp. 257-77; J. Miethke, Practical Intentionsof Scholasticism: The Example of Political Theory, in Universities and Schooling InMedieval Society, ed. W. J. Courtenay and J. Miethke (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 211-28; J.Krynen, Aristotelisme et reforme de lEtat, en France, au XIVe sie`cle, in Das Pub-likum Politischer Theorie im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. J. Miethke (Munich: R. OldenbourgVerlag, 1992), 225-36; J. P. Genet, ed., Four English Political Tracts of the Later MiddleAges, Camden Fourth Series 18 (1977), ix-xix. See also C. F. Briggs, Teaching Phi-losophy at School and Court: Vulgarization and Translation, in The Vulgar Tongue:Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity, ed. F. Somerset and N. Watson (UniversityPark: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 99-111; and the papers of A. deLibera, Le troisie`me pouvoir: les intellectuels scholastique et la politique, and S.Lusignan, Intellectuels et vie politique en France a` la fin du Moyen Age, in Lesphilosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Mid-dle Ages, vol. 1 of 3, ed. B. C. Bazan, E. Andujar, and L. G. Sbrocchi (Ottowa: Legas,1995), 241-81.


RHETOR ICA262

politics.68 For ethics he relied on the Summa Alexandrinorum, Her-mannus Alemannuss translation of an Arabic epitome of Aristo-tles Ethics, and on theMoralium dogma philosophorum and PeraldussSumma de virtutibus; for rhetoric, Ciceros De inventione, BoethiussDe rhetorica cognitione, an anonymous Ars dictaminis, and some pas-sages from the French Li faits des Romains; and, for politics, the Ocu-lus pastoralis, John of Viterbos De regimine civitatum, and a numberof official documents of the city of Siena.69 According to Brunetto,who wrote in French and Italian, and offered his expertise to hisfellow citizens of the republic of Florence, a grounding in the art ofrhetoric was crucial for effective political and moral action.70 Likehis scholastic counterparts, he attaches rhetoric to moral philoso-phy in the Tresor. Even in his Rhettorica, as Iolanda Ventura has ar-gued, he creates a political work rather than a narrowly rhetoricalone.71

Aristotles Rhetoric, then, was studied primarily in connectionwith moral philosophy, just as Murphy originally postulated. None-theless it should certainly now be apparent that one would be wrongto dismiss its importance as a rhetorical treatise in the milieu of latermedieval scholars. True, these men of learning, as Jacques Vergercalls them, seem largely to have ignored theRhetorics practical adviceon composing speeches, but they enthusiastically applied its lessonsto the broader fields of ethical formation and political discourse andaction. Nor did their message go unheard in the world of practicalpolitics, for not only did they themselves exert some influence onpolitical affairs, but certain princes actually embraced the moralphilosophical teachings of scholars likeGiles of Rome, BartolomeodaSan Concordio, and Luca Mannelli. The earliest example of this newkind of learned prince was the preacher-king Robert of Naples, whonot only owned copies of De regimine principum but also patronizedGiless fellowAugustinianDionigi daBorgoSanSepolcro (whowrote

68See above, n. 15; Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou tresor, ed. F. J. Carmody (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1948).

69For some cautionary words on Brunettos use of John of Viterbos De regiminecivitatis, see J. M. Najemy, Brunetto Latinis Politica,Dante Studies 112 (1994): 33-51;Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients, cited in n. 3 above, p. 201.

70P. Cammarosano, Leloquence laique dans lItalie communale (fin du XIIe-XIVe sie`cle), Bibliotheque de lEcole des chartes 158 (2000): 431-42.

71I. Ventura, LIconographia letteraria di Brunetto Latini, Studi Medievali series3, 38 (1997): 508-11, as quoted in J. O. Ward, Rhetorical Theory and the Rise andDecline of Dictamen in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, Rhetorica 19 (2001):175-223 (p. 197).



a commentary on Aristotles Rhetoric), as well as the DominicansRemigio de Girolami, who had preached a sermon on the Ethics, andPtolemy of Lucca, whose continuation of Aquinass own De regimineprincipum is heavily indebted to Aristotles moral philosophy.72 Laterin the century, King Roberts model would be emulated (without thepreaching, but with plenty of learned discussions) by Charles V ofFrance who commissioned French translations of the Ethics, Politics,and Economics by Nicole Oresme and, to a lesser extent, by CharlesIV of Bohemia. It might even be argued, as Samantha Kelly recentlyhas, that learned wisdom may represent a defining characteristicof European rulership more generally in the fourteenth century.73

Aristotles Rhetoric played a key role in these developments, for itprovided much of the basis for the moral discourse that lies at thevery heart of latermedieval ethical andpolitical thought andpractice.

72S. Kelly, The New Solomon: Robert of Naples (1309-1343) and Fourteenth-CenturyKingship (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 27, 39-41, 183-4. On Robert, see also, D. Pryds, Rexpraedicans: Robert dAnjou and the Politics of Preaching, in De lhomelie au sermon,cited in n. 28 above, pp. 239-62. On Remigio deGirolami, see C. T. Davis, An EarlyFlorentine Political Theorist: Fra Remigio deGirolami, in Dantes Italy, cited in n.3 above, pp. 198-223. His sermon on the Ethics receives treatment in Mulchahey,Education in Dantes Florence Revisited, in Medieval Education, cited in n. 3 above,pp. 143-81 (pp. 152-5). For Ptolemy of Lucca, see Ptolemy of Lucca, On the Governmentof Rulers: De regimine principum, trans. J. M. Blythe (Philadelphia: University of Penn-sylvania Press, 1997); also C. T. Davis, Ptolemy of Lucca and the Roman Republic,in Dantes Italy, 254-89.

73Kelly, The New Solomon, 19. The literature on Charles V and the translationsof Nicole Oresme is vast. Some key works are F. Autrand, Charles V le Sage (Paris:Fayard, 1994); J. Quillet, Charles V: le Roi lettre (Paris: Perrin, 1984); M. Grignaschi,Nicolas Oresme et son commentaire a` la Politique dAristote, in Album Helen MaudCam (Louvain and Paris: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, Editions Beatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1960), 97-151; S. Lusignan, La topique de la translatio studii et lestraductions franaises de textes savants au XIVe sie`cle, in Traduction et traducteursauMoyen Age, ed. G. Contamine (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1989), 303-15; S. Lusignan,Les lectures de Gilles de Rome et de Nicole Oresme de la Politique I, 2 dAristote,in Chemins de la pensee medievale: etudes offertes a` Zenon Kaluza (Turnhout: Brepols,2002), 653-74. On Charles IV, see C. C. Bayley, Petrarch, Charles IV, and the RenovatioImperii, Speculum 17 (1942): 323-41; M. Nejedly, Lideal du roi en Boheme a` la findu XIVe sie`cle: remarques sur le Nouveau Conseil de Smil Flaska de Pardubice, inPenser le pouvoir, cited in n. 18 above, pp. 247-60; and I. Rosario, Art and Propaganda:Charles IV of Bohemia, 1346-1378 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2000). The issue oflearned kingship in the thirteenth to early fifteenth century is discussed in C. F. Briggs,Knowledge and Royal Power in the Later Middle Ages: From Philosopher-Imam,to Clerkly King, to Renaissance Prince, (forthcoming).


RHETOR ICA264

Table

In the following table, only relevant contents are mentioned,i.e. rhetorical or moral philosophical texts, as well as the occasionalmention of a text by the same author that seems apposite. It shouldalso be noted that the selected contents are not necessarily given inorder, as texts related to Aristotles Rhetoric are always listed first.The following abbreviations are used:

Bf pseudo-Aristotle, De bona fortunaC CommentaryE Aristotle, Nicomachean EthicsM pseudo-Aristotle, Magna moraliaP Aristotle, PoliticsPo Aristotle, PoeticsQ QuaestionesR Aristotle, RhetoricY pseudo-Aristotle, Yconomica (Economics)

City Library andShelfmark

Date Relevant Contents

Admont Stiftsbibl. 608 xiiiex Engelbert of Admont,Compendium

Arras Bibl. mun. 858 xiv Jean Bernier de Fayt,Tabula moralium

Avignon Musee Calvet 1081 xiv2 Giles of Rome RC extracts;Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium

Barcelona Bibl. Univ. 586 xiv/xv Jean Bernier de Fayt,Tabula moralium

Berlin Staatsbibl.lat. quart. 377

xv Anon. EQ; Anon. RQ

Berlin Staatsbibl. lat. fol. 695 xv1 Petrus Storch,Auctoritatesmoralis philosophiae

Bologna Bibl. Univ. 197 (299) xiv Giles of Rome RC

Bologna Bibl. Univ. lat. 1625 xiv Jean de Jandun RQ (longversion); Guy Terreni EQ;Bartholomew of Bruges YQand YC; Peter of AuvergnePQ

Bruges Grootseminarie103/129

xiv Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium; Anon. Dicta superPol.



Bruges Stadsbibl. 144 xivmed Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium

Bruges Stadsbibl. 482 xiiiex ThomasAquinas/Peter of Au-vergne PC auctoritates; Gilesof Rome, RC auctoritates

Bruges Stadsbibl. 508 xiv Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium

Brussels Bibl. Roy. 2916 xv Jean de Jandun RQ (shortversion); Anon. PQ

Cambrai Bibl. mun. 392 (370) xiv Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium; and idem, alpha-betical index to Bible

Cambrai Bibl. mun. 963 (861) xiv2 Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium

Cambridge Gonville & CaiusColl. 462/735

xv Anon. Tabula super EC (ThomasAquinas), PC (Thomas Aquinas /Peter of Auvergne), and RC (Gilesof Rome)

Cambridge Peterhouse 82 xiiiex Giles of Rome RC and BfC;Thomas Aquinas EC; ThomasAquinas /Peter of AuvergnePC

Cambridge Peterhouse 208 xvmed Giles of Rome RC notabilia;Thomas Aquinas /Peter ofAuvergne PC tabula; P nota-bilia; Giles of Rome BfC nota-bilia; E with Thomas AquinasEC

Cluj Bibl. Acad. Rom.cod. 9

xv Anon. Commentum super Eth.Pol. Reth.

Cracow Bibl. Jag. 681 xiv Giles of Rome RC

Eichstatt Staatsbibl. 628 xiv2 Engelbert of Admont, Com-pendium

Erfurt Wiss. Allgemeinbibl.CA F. 13

xiv Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium; Jean de Jandun RQ;Albert of Saxony EC

Erfurt Wiss. Allgemeinbibl.CA Q. 72

xivex Giles of Rome RC glosses(with glosses from Rhetoriccommentaries of Al-Farabi,Averroes, and others)

Erfurt Wiss. Allgemeinbibl.CA Q. 319

xivex Jean Buridan RQ (short ver-sion); Albert of Saxony EC;Walter Burley PC; Albert ofSaxony YC


RHETOR ICA266

Erlangen Universitatsbibl. 380 xv Guido of Rimini, CompendiumRethoricae

Florence Bibl. Laur.Ashburnham 249

xiv Guido of Rimini, CompendiumRethoricae

Florence Bibl. Laur. S. CrocePlut. XVI sin 8

xiv Giles of Rome RC

Heiligenkreuz Stiftsbibl. 150 xiv Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium

Hereford Cath. Libr. P.III. 6 xv1 Anon. RC

Klosterneuberg Stiftsbibl. CCI 749 xiv Jean de Jandun RQ (longversion)

Leipzig Universitatsbibl.(according to L.J. Feller,Catalogus codicumMSSCtorum BiblothecaePaulinae in AcademiaLipsiensi [Leipzig,1686], p. 369bis)

Giles of Rome RC

Leipzig Universitatsbibl. 1246 xvex Jean Buridan RQ; Jean deJandun RQ (short version)

Leipzig Universitatsbibl. 1247 Jean de Jandun RQ (shortversion)

London BL Add. 21147 xv Anon. notabilia ex Pol,. Eth.,Reth., Ycon., et Metaphys.

London BL Add. 38810 xviin Giles of Rome RC synopsis

London BL Royal 5.C.iii xvmed Anon. Propositiones ex Meta-phys,. Phys., De anima, Eth.,Pol., Reth., Poet., et Seneca adLucilium

London Grays Inn Libr. 2 xiv Anon. Tabula Eth., Pol., et Reth.;Anon. P synopsis

Lubeck Hansebibl. Philos. 3 xv Jean Buridan RQ; Anon. PQand a related quaestio

Merseburg Domstiftsbibl. 131 xv Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium

Milan Bibl. TrivulzianaN. 837

xv Giles of Rome RC

Modena Bibl. Estense FondoEstense 14

xiv Anon. Conclusiones ex Pol.,Eth., et Reth. (also in Bibl.Sainte-Genevie`ve 3078)

Munich Bayerische Staatsbibl.clm 3565

xv Giles of Rome RC



Munich Bayerische Staatsbibl.clm 8001

xiv1 Giles of Rome, De differentiarhetoricae, ethicae et politicae;Summa Alexandrinorum

Naples Bibl. Naz. Centr.VII.C. 16

xiv1 Giles of Rome, De differentiarhetoricae, ethicae et politicae

Oxford Bodl. Libr. canon classlat 271

xv1 Engelbert of Admont, Com-pendium

Oxford Bodl. Libr. Digby 55 xiiiex Anon. Propositiones reth. et eth.;Martin of Braga De quattuorvirtutibus; Seneca,moral lettersextracts

Padua Bibl. Univ. 678 xiv Giles of Rome RC

Padua Bibl. Univ. 1472 xvin Jean de Jandun RQ (long ver-sion); Jean Buridan EQ; JeanBuridan PQ; Bartholomewof Bruges Quaestiones circaYcon.; Nicholas de Vaude-mont, Quaestiones super Pol.

Paris Bibl. de lArsenal 980 xiv Giles of Rome RC

Paris Bibl. Mazarine 3496 xiv2 Giles of Rome RC; GerardOdon EC; Walter Burley PC

Paris BNF Lat. 6457 xiv1 Giles RC; Thomas AquinasEC; Thomas Aquinas/Peterof Auvergne PC; Albert theGreat PC

Paris BNF Lat. 6551 xv Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium; chapter list of allAristotles books of moralphilosophy

Paris BNF Lat. 7694 xiv Giles of Rome RC

Paris BNF Lat. 16090 xiv Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium; E; brief notes onall books of Aristotles booksof moral philosophy

Paris BNF Lat. 16097 xiii/xiv Hermannus Alemannus, Di-dascalia in Reth.; Giles of RomeRC (fragment containing bk.2, chaps. 1-2)

Paris BNF Lat. 16681 xiii2 Giles of Rome RC

Paris BNF n.a. lat. 1876 xiv Giles of Rome RC; R


RHETOR ICA268

Paris Bibl. Sainte-Genevie`ve3078

xv Anon.Notabilia super Pol., Eth.,et Reth. (also in Modena, Bibl.Est. Fond. Est. 14)

Paris Bibl. de la Sorbonne120

xiiii2 Giles of Rome RC; R

Ravenna Bibl. Class. 409 xiv Giles of Rome RC and BfC;Thomas Aquinas/Peter ofAuvergne PC

Reims Bibl. mun. 488 xiv1 Giles of Rome, De differentiarhetoricae, ethicae et politicae

Reims Bibl. Mun. 493 xiv Anon. Notabilia Eth., Pol., etReth.

Rome Bibl. Apost. Vat.Vat. lat. 776

xiv Giles of Rome RC; ThomasAquinas EC

Rome Bibl. Apost. Vat.Vat. lat. 833


Rome Bibl. Apost. Vat.Borgh. lat. 314


Stuttgart Landesbibl. theol. etphil. fol. 120

xv1 Petrus Storch, Auctoritatesmoralis philosophiae

Tortosa Bibl. del Cabildo 215 xivex Anon. Tabula Reth.; Albert ofSaxony EC

Tortosa Bibl. del Cabildo 249 xv Anon. RC; Anon. PC

Troyes Bibl. mun. 912 xiv Giles of Rome RC; R

Valenciennes Bibl. mun. 400 xivmed Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoral-ium; and idem alphabetical in-dexes of Boethius and Vegetius

Venice Bibl. Marcianalat. XI.1

xvex Giles of Rome RC; WalterBurley PC

Venice Bibl. Marcianalat. XI.24

xiv Guido of Rimini CompendiumReth.

Vienna Nationalbibl. clw 2307 xiv Giles of Rome RC

Vienna Nationalbibl.clw 4364

xv1 Jean Bernier de Fayt, Tabulamoralium; idem. alphabeticalindex of Vegetius; extractsfrom Cicero

Wolfenbuttel Herzog August Bibl.Helmst. 593 (B.641)

xivmed Giles of Rome, De differentiarhetoricae, ethicae et politicae; E;Y; R; P; Averroes PoC; M

Wroclaw Bibl. Univ. IV.Q.52 xiv/xv Johannes Brasiator, NotabiliaReth., Eth., Pol., et Econ.


aristotle's rhetoric in the later medieval universities.pdf

Documents

history of rhetoric

international society

jstor terms

jstor archive

terms conditions of

amall use subject

thelater medieval universities

medieval scholastics